Dreamwalker
by antulien
Summary: Like everybody else, she has no memory of how she got here, who she is, or what the Glade was. All she has in the world is her name. And the company of a tall blond stranger who visits her every night in her dreams. Newt/OC. AU.
1. Chapter 1

The same dream. Over and over again. I could map out every scene with skilled familiarity.

First, the Glade. Fires burning. High, skittering voices on the heavy, golden air. I know this place. This is home…as close as I can remember. Figures stoop in the fields, their arms bronzed from the sun. Runners file in from beyond the towering Gates, nothing more than a ribbon of color as they fly through the verdant fields. Harriet stands tall against the setting sun, rigid and strong like roots in the earth. Our leader – Rachel – calls a gathering and the Glade comes alive with activity, ants falling into step in three large columns through the willowy grasses. Fielders, Builders, Slashers, and the small group of Runners that come rushing out of the grasslands, breathless and glimmering with sweat.

And then the scene changes.

Darkness blots out the green and gold of the Glade. The voices filter in, hazy, distant, and I can only tell that they are female from their pitch. All of them talk at once in hushed tones. They're afraid, all of them, in the same way that they were when they first arrived. I remember the panic. How it filled up their eyes and brimmed over in the form of tears. Their lips trembled. They shrank away when you tried to touch them, help them out of the box and onto solid ground. I heard those voices – the panicked shrieks coming in waves, piercing through my brain with the sharpness of cold metal. Then, above all the rest, a deep, calm voice – _his _voice.

We can only communicate here, in this in-between world, suspended just over dreams and just under the surface of waking. His eyes are huge and soft, like a doe's, and I ache to reach up and brush the high arch of his sun-freckled cheekbone.

"Newt."

"How long has it been?"

I smile a little at the thrill shooting up and down my spine. It flutters like butterfly wings in my chest. "Too long."

His brow furrows. "You haven't been sleeping."

It's not a question. "Yes…but you already knew that, didn't you?"

"Why not?"

"I lead a stressful life. I have no idea who the people around me are, where I am, much less who I am," I scoff at him. "What do you think? Should I see a doctor?"

Shaking his head, he pushes me gently. I barely felt it. "Quit it, would you? I get enough of the sarcasm bit from Minho..."

He looks away, out across the now empty grasslands. Whenever he comes, I've realized that everyone else disappears. The earth beneath our feet is our own. I can't even tell if he's real or some imagined hope I've drudged up from an old life somewhere. All I know is that the numbness goes away. I feel _everything. _Fear, anger, joy – my favorite is anticipation, what I feel when I hear his footsteps echoing through the columns of trees. It's a welcome deviation from the same old dead calm of everyday life here in the Glade. Where the only movement in my body is my own pulse keeping time in the back of my head. It's like I've come back to life. And I wish I could just stay asleep, forever, and be here with him where everything feels real and safe.

Even if he _isn't_ real – I don't care. I look forward to the night, when I fall asleep and emerge from the darkness to find him trudging out of the forest again with a pack bobbing against his thin hips. A boyish smile on his face.

Maybe I am losing my shit, like Beth says. Going out of my head.

He turns his head toward me, still lost in thought. "You know, I always wonder, even when I'm awake…if you're even real."

"Does it matter?"

He nods slightly. "I think it does…what if this is some sort of clue? Or a trick? And we're playing into it?"

"I just know that...I'd rather be here with you than be awake."

"Don't you see, though?" His eyes meet mine, dark and churning, restless water under a blank night sky. "What if…those people. That put us here, keep putting more of us here…what if this is them playing with our buggin' heads."

My hands itch to take his, and I eye them as he worries his knuckles in his lap. "I don't care if they are. They've done worse things to me. If letting them play with my head means I get to see you, it's a price I'm willing to pay."

"You shouldn't be."

"Well I am," I insist. "And there must be a reason why we meet here, why you can feel everything I'm feeling - "

"That's just it!" He says, standing up from the fallen birch tree we've been sitting on, settling his anxious hands on the peaks of his jutting hips. "I can't figure out how – more importantly _why _they're doing this to us. What do they want? What do they _get _out of it? Better yet, who the _shuck _are they?"

I snort, watching the breeze I've imagined in my dream world come to life and play in the gold thicket of his hair. It reminds me of the wheat we grow in the gardens, how it shimmers in the light and sways beneath the wind.

"You and your stupid made up words." I get up, moving toward him, the ache in my stomach deepening as I smell what must be him on the air.

If he's real – out there somewhere, flesh and blood and bone – I don't know what he really smells like, or feels like, or sounds like. This is all just what I imagine Newt must be. Tall and thin, with legs like a newborn colt, all bony and sprinkled with golden hair. His eyes melting like chocolate under strong, thick brows. A slight lilt to his words, different, but not quite exotic.

This is the Newt that belongs to _me_ – and _my_ Newt smells like dusty earth, a pleasant smell, and the rich crackling scent which fills the air just before a thunderstorm. There's an undercurrent of brackish sweat running quietly underneath it all. It's a weird and wonderful smell, almost impossible to describe. All I know is that it makes me long to snake my arms around his middle, rest my head against the ridges of his spine, and inhale until my lungs run out of room for air.

"We made them up together." He turns back around, already knowing that I'm there. "Me and the boys. The other shanks."

"There you go again."

He smirks, but the expression fades and a new one crops up quickly in its wake. Confusion.

"You're doing it again."

I know exactly what he's talking about. It took me a long time to figure it out, too. That alien sensation that grips my heart in a warm vice every time I'm near him. I've lost track of how many times we've met in this make believe glade, how many years it's been since I wandered in, lost and alone, and found him kneeling there in the middle of the cabbages and tomato vines. But I can always remember the first time I felt it – a stirring up of dust in my chest, where it had been dormant for so long, like a ghost town. I've figured it out – affection, but different from what I feel for the other girls. It runs deeper. Burns hotter, sort of like a runaway grease fire.

"I'm not doing anything."

"Yes you are. I can feel it." He purses his lips, eyes scanning my face for the smallest trace of a tell. "It's…weird. Makes my stomach turn."

I don't say anything, just watch – with a small smile – as his frustration builds.

"Fine," he growls, throwing his hands up at me. "Keep your buggin' feminine secrets."

Liquid fire filters through my veins. It's him. _Anger. _"Don't be upset with me."

He sits back down on the log, huffing slightly as he makes contact with the rough, grainy bark."I'm not upset…"

I take his hand, and the feeling cools a little. "You can't hide it from me."

"It's just…" He shrugs a little. "We don't have secrets, do we? We can't, not anymore…and yet there's just that one thing you won't tell me. You've somehow found a way to hide it and it annoys the shuck out of me. I can't figure it out."

"Maybe because it doesn't exist."

He's searching my eyes again, squinting as his suspicion burgeons just beneath the surface. "You're lying."

With a disgusted grunt, he throws my hand back into my own lap and stands up quickly, making for the forest. The fire rekindles from cooling ashes.

"Newt, wait, I - "

"Don't!" He says, facing away from me. His hand rests for a moment against the trunk of an old, decomposing ash tree. "I just…let's forget it. I have to get back. It must be morning by now."

"Don't leave me this way. Don't leave angry. We're friends. Friends talk about things."

He bows his head, then turns to face me, eyes softening. The heat in my veins dissipates. It's replaced with numbness – he's feeling nothing, if only just the slightest mark of shame coloring his features. "They do, friends do talk...so why won't you talk to me?"

The way he looks at me...it's almost pleading. How can I tell him what I'm feeling when I can't even name it? Understand it? The only explanation I can offer is the emotion itself, worming its way through the dark earthy color of his gaze, holding steady with mine. It's strange for both of us...

"You're right." He says. "I'm sorry."

It's my turn to shrug. "I know…you're kind of transparent."

He laughs a little and closes the distance between us. It takes my breath away, when he stands this close, knowing how it affects the both of us, and I can feel every little suggestion of emotion that races through his head. Right now there's contentment and shame and always the air of fearful uncertainty where our memory is supposed to be. And something else – something new from his side. It feels like a million little fingers prodding me, beating against my skull from every different direction.

"I wish I knew who you were…" He says, those massive eyes of his taking in every little detail of my face. A shiver runs through me when his dark gaze catches mine. "Who you really are. I feel like...maybe we knew each other once. Or we're supposed to."

"You know who I am."

He rolls his eyes. "You know what I mean."

"Like I said," I reply. "To me, it doesn't matter. It only matters that I know you now."

Panic grips the both of us, originating from him, and it echoes through our bones with renewed ferocity. Nervousness pulls at the corners of his mouth, blooms pink in the depths of his cheeks like ripples in the water. He lifts his hand and hesitates for just a moment before he reaches forward to press the palm against my cheek. It's rough and shiny with callus, aged like working man's hands, but he's just a boy.

He's experimenting with it. Rattling its cage to see what it can do.

"There it is again." He whispers.

"What?"

"That…what you're feeling now."

"It's called irritation," I tell him. "A nasty side effect of having my personal space invaded by an insolent little klunk."

He laughs, distracted, and his hand falls away. I can breathe again."Brilliant choice of words."

Suddenly, the smile disappears, and he tilts his head back toward the forest. Whispers tangle with the incoming breeze, incoherent, but he seems to recognize them. He backs away slowly, reluctantly, without even knowing he's doing it.

"I have to go." He says. "They need me back there."

I try to hide my disappointment - but it's no use. He knows it's there. "I guess I'll be seeing you."

"Only in your dreams." He jokes, pulling his lips tight against his teeth for a moment, as if the words themselves were uncomfortable. "Take care of yourself, Emma."

I watch him disappear into the growing darkness of the forest. It starts to spread, gray shadows forming at my feet.

"Goodbye." It comes in only a whisper, and I close my eyes as the dream-Glade disappears.

Only to reopen them - to the draped cloth walls of my tent.

.

.

.

"Been seein' Dream Boy again, huh Emma?"

It's just Beth. There's a knowing smirk on her face as she wrings the water from her shirts and hangs them to dry outside her own tent across from mine. The first traces of sunlight cling to her back and drip down into the colorless dirt like liquid gold. I ignore her, kicking the quilts off of me before I stand up and tuck my pillow beneath the sheets. With my back turned, I can work in peace. I don't have to look at that stupid smirk on her face. I know she thinks I'm crazy. Or an idiot. Or whatever it is that she thinks.

"Dunno why you bother with him," she says over the cold slap of wet fabric. "He doesn't exist."

"What if he does?" I retort.

"Then you'd never see him. We're stuck here, forever, remember?"

I finish making the bed and slip on my moccasins, ducking beneath the tent flap and turning my back on her before she can fire off anymore smart ass remarks. The others will have gathered already at the meeting spot. I always wake up late, a dangerous habit when every minute of waiting is precious time wasted…but I know why they keep me. Despite being the airhead of the whole lot, I'm the fastest, and no one – not one Newbie that's come since – has been able to beat me out of a sprint yet.

Leah and Anna are waiting for me when I get there, stomping their feet and folding their arms as I dash across the flat, empty grasslands. The Glade is just waking up behind us. Smoke curls into the air, black and littered with old ashes. Soon, everyone will come together for breakfast – everyone except us, the Runners.

Leah is the patient one. Anna just keeps stamping around like a billy goat, collecting her pack and water skin as the rumbling starts and the maze begins to open up from the outside in.

I glance, quickly, at Leah as I throw my pack over my shoulders. The weight of her gaze is uncomfortable, almost suffocating, like she's already under my skin – looking for the answers I won't readily give.

"You don't have to say it. I already know."

"I wasn't going to."

Leah clears her throat and addresses us both. "You know what to do. You're late and you're dead - literally." She looks at me when she says this, but doesn't accuse me outright. "Keep a sharp eye. See you at nightfall. Look alive, ladies."

The sky above us opens up with light. Dawn has come.


	2. Chapter 2

Dusk would come soon. The sky is already deepening in the west, holding steely blue clouds tight against the high seams of the walls. I start looking for markers - a crude circle I carved during my first week as a Runner into the wall of section 4, smeared remnants of burnt charcoal crosses in 2. I make sure to leave clear signs in the most dangerous sections, where I've run into the highest volumes of those creatures that inhabit the Maze. Newt calls them Grievers. I don't think I'll ever get his language.

I've had my share of dealings with 'Grievers'. They're the stuff of nightmares. Crimes against nature. The closest look I've got of them is the closest I ever want to get – and I couldn't see much. Blurred images that haunt what little memory I have left. Their legs were spindly, quick, and fashioned out of rusting metal. The rest of him – of it - looked alive. I honestly didn't see that much. Just the chaotic mass of spider legs being thrown toward me and a scorpion-like tail stabbing the concrete beside my head.

I'd been stupid then. Fresh out of the box. Now, I know better. If you hear them – run. Run for your life and hope it doesn't have friends waiting on the other side.

My legs are starting to get sore as I reach the first corner that marks the beginning of section 1. Heavy footfalls – Leah, the power sprinter – resonate faintly along the outer wall of 2. Anna must be making her way through the external zones of 3. In a matter of seconds, we'll be convening in the usual meeting spot, the one Leah chose when she and I made our first attempt to track the Maze. Anna joined in later, one of Leah's prized recruits.

The thought of seeing another human being again after hours of blank concrete and crushing, attentive silence makes the muscles in my legs pump a little harder despite their fatigue. The end of the corridor widens gradually until I reach the corner and make a hard right, where I come face to face with a pale, wheezing Leah. Her forehead glistens under a beam of mottled sunlight. She grasps weakly at ashy, knobby knees and holds up a finger, as if to tell me she needs a second.

Anna should be here by now.

I try to listen over the sound of Leah's labored breaths. But there's nothing. No hollow footsteps. No strained gasping. Just Leah, who's finally realized it's utterly still out there as she straightens her posture.

"It's dusk," she says, eyeing the Gate as if it'll snap shut at any second. "She's always here by dusk."

"Maybe she pulled something. Give her a chance."

We both strain our ears over the quiet. It seems so loud as we hold our breaths and search for signs of life out there in this shallow concrete grave. Leah starts shaking her head, confirming my suspicions…

Anna isn't going to make it.

"Should we call for her? Maybe she's lost…"

"Are you crazy?" I reply. "You don't go around shouting in here, not even this close to the Gate. This place will be crawling with Grievers…"

She peers over at me, her lips thinning into a downturned line . There's a look they all give me when I mention anything to do with Newt at all…his mannerisms, his strange words, even a color that they've somehow associated with him in their dull imaginations. I get the look – a perfect blend of pity and disbelief.

"I still don't know why you call those things Grievers…"

"Never mind that," I say quickly, hoping she'll forget the whole thing if we move on to other subjects. A sense of slow, crawling dread turns the blood in my veins to ice. "The point is she's missing. And she won't make it through the night in here. Not alone."

"Rachel always says one man for himself - "

A deep rumbling erupts from behind us.

Leah whips her head back around, her eyes wide and flashing with fear. The earth trembles under our feet, the walls that tower over us folding together like pieces of melting clay.

"You go back if you want, coward." I reply. "I'm staying."

For a moment, she's caught in a stalemate, the paralyzing battle of self-preservation and her own humanity filling her head with racing, panicked notions. She pauses, considering, and with an exaggerated sigh I roll my eyes and turn my back on her. My decision has been made. I wouldn't want to be left behind if it were me in her place, so I could never let anyone suffer such a fate – knowing how terrible it would be. In the back of my head, the sound of the gate closing causes my chest to constrict painfully…I glance back at the thin strip of light still pouring through the narrow opening, Leah slipping through just in time.

The word seeps like fire and venom through my head, stoking the fire of an old, nearly forgotten anger -

_You __**are**__ a coward_.

I make a note to myself to enjoy the coming sunset, to watch what little sky you can see beyond the prison of the Maze.

It might just be the last I'll ever see.

.

.

.

I happen upon her in the worst way possible.

I trip over her mangled corpse.

For a long time, I sat there on the cold ground, paralyzed, barely able to see through the thickening haze of dusk. Her blank eyes stare back at me, glassy and black like a doll's. I wish I could move, to close her eyes, grant her some of the dignity she lost when she died alone, like an animal, in this wasteland. I failed her. The least I could do was say goodbye properly.

I'm desperately trying to suppress the growing realization that I could be joining her soon. It slithers through the back of my head, still just a wisp of a thought, but I can feel the reality setting in. It weighs on my shoulders like an anvil. Tears push violently at the back of my eyes; I feel their sting as they struggle against the last defenses of pride and denial.

No one has ever survived being trapped in the Maze overnight.

But that doesn't mean it can't be done.

The paralysis lifts and I clamor to my knees at Anna's side. It's painful to look at her. Like most of the other girls in the Glade, I knew little about her, only that she was known just as much for her warmth and selflessness amongst our group as she was for her impatience and stubbornness. We were all a little stubborn anyway. Especially Beth.

I reach forward and close her eyes, moving the bloodied hand beside her head to her chest.

"I'm sorry, Anna," I tell her, searching her pale face for some lingering sign of forgiveness. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you."

After a long moment of delay, I pull myself reluctantly to my feet and rise to meet my own fate. Suddenly, the determination to live falters. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to die. I'd finally escape the Glade. And we still don't know – if there's any way out of this place outside of death itself.

Night finally settles like a black veil over the sky. Stars emerge, their light as cold and distant as the empty vastness of the Maze. There's no comfort of a moon in the sky tonight, just a pale waxy sliver in its place. The passageways are completely dark. The walls are nothing more than black shapes, rising up before me with the fearsome authority of giants.

They've never felt so tall and impenetrable as they do now.

.

.

.

"Emma…"

I open my eyes to full, gleaming sunlight. The Glade, my version of it in dreams. Waves of long grasses and wispy remnants of weeds spread free and flowing out to the foothills of the Maze, a familiar setting that draws out the fear and anger of the night. They seem vague, almost frothy around their edges, like churning waves under a dark and dangerous sky. A kind of peace settles into the pit of my stomach, where thick, pulsating dread had been before, suffocating me from within. I feel safe now. I always feel safe here.

My head is balanced against Newt's deceptively strong arm. His expression is pinched tight with worry, dark eyes still scanning my face for signs of life. The last vestiges of his waning panic drift through me in waves, a gray sea calming beneath the abating storm. His sigh of relief, it echoes through my own lungs.

A shared peace settles in the air between us.

"I thought you were gone…" He smiles wryly, relaxing now that the panic had gone. "I thought we were having a nightmare."

Almost reluctantly, I untangle my limp body from his arms, crossing my own in discomfort as I remember that this is just a dream - the nightmare is waiting for me when I wake.

Without thinking, I blurt it out – the truth he won't want to hear. "I'm trapped in the Maze."

I can hear his mouth fall open slightly – a light pop of separating flesh, the exhale of hitched breath. Then the fear rekindles - not nearly as ferocious as it had been before, when I first woke in his grasp, but it's there. A rallying threat. "How - "

"I'm a Runner, you know that," I tell him, glancing over a bony peak of shoulder to find him. "A griever got one of us, I didn't know it at the time. I stayed behind to try and find her."

"It was a very brave thing you did."

_Lies._

"No it wasn't." The words are biting. "It was stupid."

He appears behind me and grips my shoulder, his palm a warm, comfortable weight against my cool throbbing skin that feels so self-aware, knowing I could be dead at any moment and I won't wake up. "I don't think I could've done the same if I were in your place. You're braver than I am."

"That's not saying much, is it?"

Rolling his eyes, he replaces the comforting gesture with a light punch in the arm. "Smart ass."

For a long moment, we sink back into our own heads, thinking – enjoying the air and the summer heat and the color of green that blots out all the fear, stretching on for forever in our own safe imagination.

"I guess this is goodbye." I tell him, my eyes downcast. I don't want to see the fight in his eyes, not when it feels like a missing arm, a gaping hole, in my chest.

"Nonsense," he says, and I can hear it in his voice. The fight. The hope. All of it. "This self-pitying klunk? It's stupid. _You're _being stupid."

I snap my head toward him, glowering. "Thanks for breaking it to me so gently."

"There's no other way to break it to you, Emma. You're moping. Feeling sorry for yourself." He gets up noisily behind me, too disgusted to be in my presence. I can feel it resonate in me - that sick, twisting sensation that makes your stomach do flip flops, and the frustration touches it, makes it glow like hot coals.

Walking quickly toward the forest, the pads of his slippered feet grind heavily into the sun-warmed earth. He turns around, anger making the boyish lines of his face harden and age in just a matter of moments.

All of the sudden he looks so ancient; the weight of old age breaks the melting softness of his eyes, fracturing with the delicate grace of glass. It's only a pretense now. We've seen too much to hold onto the youth that slips through our fingers with the fleeting ease of sand. These bodies we wear like an old disguise, clothes we've outgrown. The skin doesn't fit anymore. It sags around the emptiness, the darkness. Our own voice, breath, whistles through the painful cracks in our heart. We feel it the most on the inside. The loss of lives we'll never know.

He looks himself now – an old man trapped in the body of a lost little boy. There's sadness lingering there, a cool whisper hiding behind the rage and fire of deceptive youth.

He can't stand it. To lose another friend.

We're one in the same.

"You're a part of me, you know. Every night, in the dark, I lie down and I can still feel you moving somewhere in here…a ghost I can't remember until I fall asleep." His chest his heaving, tears roaming before his eyes in bright, colorless fractures of light. "I can't lose that. I just – can't."

Newt shakes his head violently and continues on his way. He's murmuring angrily to himself as he goes, the vicious words rising and falling as they filter through the trees - now disappearing altogether as he departs from this place. I'm left alone.

I guess there's nothing left to do now but wait.

For death… or for the break of day.


End file.
